Article ID: CBB014539666

Nuptial metamorphosis: masculine perspectives on the transformation of women during their wedding night in nineteenth-century France (2018)

unapi

In nineteenth-century France, many writings were given over to describing the wedding night. This was seen as an event more important for wives than for husbands, because of the loss of their virginity. Some texts went further and saw in the wedding night the occasion of a total transformation that affected women alone. Written by men for male readers, these considerations were far from being simply the fruit of literary ramblings, misogynist superstitions or old-fashioned popular representations: they were built on scientific discourses that confirmed and often inspired them. Thus these masculine representations lacked the balance that was characteristic of gender relationships in the nineteenth century. Rather than being confined to the supposedly most obvious bodily changes (the loss of virginity and breaking of the hymen) the changes arising from the wedding night were seen as affecting the woman’s whole being, physical and moral.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB014539666/

Similar Citations

Article Robin, Diana; (2013)
Women on the Move: Trends in Anglophone Studies of Women in the Italian Renaissance (/isis/citation/CBB001320631/)

Article Gaard, Greta; (2013)
Toward a Feminist Postcolonial Milk Studies (/isis/citation/CBB001201819/)

Book Page, Judith W; Smith, Elise Lawton; (2011)
Women, Literature, and the Domesticated Landscape: England's Disciples of Flora, 1780--1870 (/isis/citation/CBB001214713/)

Thesis Malane, Rachel Ann; (2004)
“Sex in Mind”: The Gendered Brain in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Mental Sciences (/isis/citation/CBB001562029/)

Chapter Hammack, Brenda Mann; (2010)
Florence Marryat's Female Vampire and the Scientizing of Hybridity (/isis/citation/CBB001201872/)

Chapter Samantha Evans; (2017)
Scientific Wives and Allies (/isis/citation/CBB613489047/)

Article Oldenziel, Ruth; Veenis, Milena; (2013)
The Glass Recycling Container in the Netherlands: Symbol in Times of Scarcity and Abundance, 1939--1978 (/isis/citation/CBB001201569/)

Book Goldstein, Carolyn M; (2012)
Creating Consumers: Home Economists in Twentieth-Century (/isis/citation/CBB001421242/)

Article Richardson, Sarah S.; (2012)
Sexing the X: How the X Became the “Female Chromosome” (/isis/citation/CBB001200847/)

Book Poska, Allyson M.; Couchman, Jane; McIver, Katherine A.; (2013)
The Ashgate Research Companion to Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (/isis/citation/CBB001201726/)

Article Romero Carrasquillo, Francisco J.; Troyer de Romero, Hilaire K.; (2013)
Aquinas on the Inferiority of Woman (/isis/citation/CBB001201753/)

Article Farnsworth, Jane Elizabeth; (2014)
“I Am Ripe for Man”: Gendered Time in Thomas Heywood's An Emblematicall Dialogue (1637) (/isis/citation/CBB001550491/)

Book Shaw, Debra Benita; (2000)
Women, science, and fiction: The Frankenstein Inheritance (/isis/citation/CBB000110908/)

Article Griswold, Robert L.; (2012)
“Russian Blonde in Space”: Soviet Women in the American Imagination, 1950--1965 (/isis/citation/CBB001320683/)

Book Larson, Wendy; (2009)
From Ah Q to Lei Feng: Freud and Revolutionary Spirit in 20th Century China (/isis/citation/CBB001020718/)

Authors & Contributors
Couchman, Jane
Evans, Samantha
Gaard, Greta
Goldstein, Carolyn M.
Griswold, Robert L.
Hamlin, Kimberly Ann
Journals
American Quarterly
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly
Contemporary European History
I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance
Journal of British Studies
Journal of Social History
Publishers
Cambridge University Press
Ashgate
Ashgate Publishing
Palgrave
Stanford University Press
University of North Carolina Press
Concepts
Science and gender
Women
Science and culture
Science and literature
Women in science
Science and religion
People
Collins, Wilkie
Darwin, Charles Robert
Darwin, Emma Wedgwood
Freud, Sigmund
Hardy, Thomas
Post, Elisabeth Maria
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
20th century, early
20th century, late
17th century
18th century
Places
Great Britain
United States
Europe
Netherlands
England
China
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment